Songblog: The Only Only Child in the World

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This song began life with a completely different title and a slightly different chord progression. But the feel was kind of similar. I had a set of lyrics almost finished, but they were a little whiny and I didn’t like the sentiments I was expressing.

So I kind of put it in a drawer and forgot about it for a while. Andrea and I were visiting a couple of very dear friends in February. I’m an only child, and my mother’s health was at a low point then, and I was feeling pretty wiped out. Our host plays a little guitar and he had a nice old Yamaha lying around his living room.

We were waiting for a cab to go out for dinner, and as so often happens in these situations, I picked up the instrument and was fooling around with the chord progression, while we talked. And I remember saying that my situation was not unique – I wasn’t ‘the only only child in the world’, after all.

To be honest, the minute I knew I had that phrase, a voice in my head told me I was going to make an album that year, despite my plans to take a year off. As for the sentiment, it’s all very autobiographical, I’m afraid. If it veers towards self-pity, I hope it comes back from the brink. I was trying to say that love is… the fuel in the tank. The energy that makes all things possible.

The recording was interesting. Despite recording the whole thing with horns, full band, backing vocals, sax solo etc etc, I ended up scrapping that version and reverting to the rough-round-the-edges demo that you hear here – me playing an old upright piano in need of a tune. We overdubbed the vocals and guitars at Clive’s studio, though. I’m very grateful to Clive for his patience. After all that work, I had to phone and tell him I hated it.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

I said, ‘I think I’ve fallen in love with the demo recording of me on an old out of tune upright piano in a storeroom at Flowerfield.’

Without hesitation, he said: ‘Bring the recording in – let’s dump it into the computer and redo the vocals with a proper mic.’

And we did an extra day – and I rediscovered the heart of the song. Listening to the big arrangement, it reminds me that sometimes more is actually less.

MUSICIANS: Anthony Toner – vocals, piano and guitars; Clive Culbertson – harmony vocals

LYRICS:

When real life tells you the score,

and the angels of destruction

come knocking on your door

and you lay down thinking you can choose

and when you wake up you’re

surrounded by the blues.

And you build your fortress walls high and strong,

but you can only hold them off for so long.

And you talk like you’re the only

only child in the world.

As a kid you made a world of your own.

You killed the long winter afternoons all alone.

With a box of plastic soldiers on the shelf,

you fought the Second World War all by yourself.

But now you’re older, and surrendering to doubt -

as the ammunition starts to run out.

You throw your hands up, like the only

only child in the world.

But did they wrap you with love?

(yes they did)

Warm blankets of love?

(every night and day)

Did they hold you tight in their arms,

all the way back home?

And nothing weighs you down like what you feel -

but you have to put your shoulder to the wheel,

and keep moving, like the only

only child in the world.​

A heartbreaking absence - RIP Mike Moloney

(A tribute to our friend, the late and very great Mike Moloney, who passed away suddenly last weekend - his funeral service takes place this Wednesday. If you'd like to read some more tributes to Mike, or contribute one of your own, log on to www.mikemoloney.net)

It’s almost impossible to accept that Mike is gone – he was a man with such lively, sparky presence that the word ‘absent’ just refuses to sit in the same sentence.

Andrea and I were late converts to the Cult of Mike, but of course once you join, you’re in for life. We met him through our dear friend Nuala, and were immediately hooked on his mixture of animated intelligence and twinkly, well-read charm. He was like Mark Twain meets Bugs Bunny.

The last time we met Mike was a couple of weeks ago in St. George’s Market in Belfast (where we would often run into each other). Andrea and I were queuing for coffee, and he came up silently behind us and put his knee in behind mine in an attempt to topple me.

As I staggered and remained upright, I turned around just in time to see him scampering – like a cartoon mouse – back to another queue, sniggering and waving bye bye.

Three days later I was running sound and lights for a presentation evening at Flowerfield Arts Centre, where I work. It was a presentation evening, aimed at celebrating the support from the local business community for the North West ‘200’ motorcycle races. Someone was showing a Powerpoint presentation – pictures of the high jinks that the motorcyclists would get up to during Race Week.

‘But there are some things even these daredevils won’t tackle’, he said – and brought up a slide of one of the riders standing beside Mike as he performed one of his pyrotechnics, flames leaping from his mouth. I remember chuckling with delight and recognition.

It seems fitting to me that the last thought I had of Mike was an image of him doing something superhuman. Breathing fire and defying the ordinary.

(on behalf of Andrea and I)

Songblog: St. Paul's 8th Floor Farewell Blues

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I have no idea what sparked this one off, or indeed who Saint Paul may be. I remember playing the guitar chord introduction late one night in the kitchen of the house we rented on Hillfoot Street in East Belfast, when I was on my own and Andrea was away somewhere.

​And the words ‘the last time I saw Saint Paul…’ came to me out of a bottle of red wine that was keeping me company. I liked the idea that St. Paul was someone you could have met a couple of months ago, someone you could be talking to your friends about… I had a hard time leaving the ending so open-ended, but the more I listened to it, the more I came to trust it. 'That's how we left it'.

One of my oldest friends came to see one of the shows recently, and he and I talked afterwards about the song. He said that he had a feeling that he knew who St. Paul was, but couldn't pin a name on him. And that was exactly the same kind of disembodied compassion that had driven the song to the surface, I think. It’s hard to tell sometimes. I might never work out who St. Paul is or was, but I love him just the same.

I think the 'block of flats' may have come from my own childhood - the first proper home that we had as a family was one of the maisonettes at Harpur's Hill. I remember very little about the time, as we only stayed there for a few years. I went up there yesterday and took this picture.

MUSICIANS: Anthony Toner – vocals and guitars; Clive Culbertson – bass; Peter McKinney – drums; John McCullough - piano

LYRICS:​

St. Paul’s 8th Floor Farewell Blues

The last time I saw Saint Paul,

he was living in a block of flats.

You could see the world for miles around.

He said, ‘there’s nothing worth the looking at.’

I thought, ‘he’s gone...

so long, so long. Come back now.’

The last time I saw Saint Paul,

he was refusing everybody’s calls.

He had a sign that said ‘Closing Down’

blu-tacked up on the kitchen wall.

He said, ‘I found it,

with demolition all around it.

That’s why I like it’.

My mother said ‘you should stay clear

of that damaged boy.

He’s been reducing you to tears for years and years.’

The last time I saw Saint Paul,

he was living on jam and bread.

He said, ‘I feel like just letting go.’

Then I reminded him of what we’d said.

He said, ‘I know...

but change the subject, or go.’

That’s how we left it.​

Sing Under the Bridges Songblog: Tell Me Something That I Don't Know

(Welcome to the song blog for the new album... Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I’ll be posting blogs on each of the songs, with some background information, details on musician’s credits, lyrics and a link to the track itself if you want to listen while you read. Please feel free to make a comment, and to share the posts with anyone you think might be interested!)

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This whole album seemed to be full of contrasts when I listened back to it – folk things, soul things, country things… I wondered what it would be like to turn it to your advantage, to make the songs zig and zag in different directions, take a tour through the genres, like the mid-period Beatles albums used to do.

So here we are – I thought the boldest thing would be to kick off with something that was completely unlike what had gone before.

Shortly after the MAC opened in Belfast, we went to see the wonderful Ponydance dance troupe (pictured above right) perform their show Straight to DVD, and roared and laughed our way through it (they’re great – they kind of redefine what modern dance means). But in the middle of it there was an old soul/jazz shuffle tune that they played which I adored.

I have no idea what it was, but I came home wanting to write and record something like that. Of course, all these big intentions get bent slightly out of shape as soon as you begin the recording process. But it was still a lot of fun, and I’m very pleased with the feel of the whole thing, and Linley Hamilton’s New Orleans trumpet solo in particular.

Lyrically, it’s a fairly straight-ahead little love song. I wanted to give something of the ‘glass half-full’ feel of our lives, I suppose. And I’m secretly very proud of that line: ‘Everytime I look in those big green eyes, I feel my leaky little boat capsize’.

(everytime we go to Canada, Andrea’s trying to get me into a canoe. I always tell her that I’m only used to getting into vessels that I can also drive me car onto and order a cooked breakfast). I’m also very proud that I wrote the horn parts for the song – I may be one of the slowest arrangers in the world, but I’m pleased with how this one turned out.

MUSICIANS: Anthony Toner – vocals and guitars; Clive Culbertson – bass; Peter McKinney – drums; John McCullough – piano; Linley Hamilton – trumpet; Meilana Gillard - saxophone

LYRICS:​

Tell Me Something That I Don’t Know

Sunshine hits the river:

a thousand flashbulbs pop in my face.

I’m caught walking with you on my arm -

it feels good.

So hold the front back and the back page,

and all the pages in the middle.

Small news in the big town,

it feels good.

My friends tell me not to let you go,

I say: ‘ha! Tell me something that I don’t know.’

Every time I look in those big green eyes,

I feel my leaky little boat capsize.

So hold tight to your paddle,

lose whatever weighs you down,

and sing under the bridges,

it feels good.

My friends tell me not to let you go,

I say: ‘ha! Tell me something that I don’t know.’

Every time I look in those big green eyes,

it gives my wheezy little heart a surprise.

All the mistakes that you make

come undone in the water.

They ride down to the ocean.

It feels good.​

Echo by Thomas Kinsella

​The Poetry Project sent me an e-mail this morning with this wonderful poem by Thomas Kinsella, and I thought I would share it with you. It is being paired with a video, called 'In a Hushed Requite' by Liam O'Callaghan, and it's a beautiful partnership. You can watch the video HERE.

And here's the poem:

Echo

by Thomas Kinsella

He cleared the thorns
from the broken gate,
and held her hand
through the heart of the wood
to the holy well.

They revealed their names
and told their tales
as they said that they would
on that distant day
when their love began.

And hand in hand
they turned to leave.
When she stopped and whispered
a final secret
down to the water.

Lifetimes piling up

The familiar corridors. Visiting mum in hospital, once again.

This time after what appears to have been a minor heart attack, last week. She was very under the weather and uncomfortable as we visited last Thursday afternoon, and I realise - with dull shame and throat-lump remorse - that she may have been having a heart attack right before our eyes, as we made jolly small talk over toasted sandwiches.

Now I wander up from reception, clutching a Get Well Soon card and seeing all of the anxious relatives and put-upon staff going from place to place, each locked in their own bubble of experience.

I pass one of the windows, giving out onto institutionalised shrubbery planting and plain faced buildings (the whole HOSPITAL under threat of closure) and shivering trees blown by a steely, icy easterly wind. There’s a stocky, white haired little woman wearing a purple padded coat, facing into the windowsill and sobbing into a mobile phone. Her shoulders heave up and down and breath leaves her as she weeps, unable to even speak to the person she has called.

My steps falter and every part of me wants to walk over and lay a hand on her shoulder, but she is so hunched forward into the windowframe, so… completely given over to the act of weeping, that it feels like an intrusion. And so I walk past this… grief, this loss, this enormous heavy-hearted sadness, and go about my business - as everyone else goes about theirs.

What is it about us that stops us from moving forward, from throwing our arms around each other in time of need? This little stocky woman with wiry white hair, in her neat purple windcheater. So obviously in need of comfort, and so alone in whatever is assailing her.

Downstairs as I leave the hospital, there is a painting on the wall - of houses piled up on houses, a depiction of a vertical jumble of eight dwellings, four pairs of houses teetering upwards under their burden, each with its own windows and doors looking out from under the weight of the house above.

Farewell to Chopper...

At CKCU FM station in Ottawa last summer with the legendary Chopper McKinnon, who sadly passed away last week.ANOTHER sad farewell this week, with the news that ‘Chopper’ McKinnon of CKCU in Ottawa has passed away. I made a new friend of Chopper - and Chris White, who co-hosted his radio show Canadian Spaces - during my visit to Canada last summer, and made a memorable appearance on his Saturday morning broadcast.

To be fair, Chopper had no idea who I was and he had been recommended to invite me on the show by some mutual friends. The programme has been broadcasting for 35 years, the longest running roots radio show in Canada.

Marilyn and Warren Major fortified me with fine coffee up in Chelsea and Warren drove me down into the city and out to Carleton University, where the radio station is situated, and we made our way through the quiet Saturday morning campus and up in the lift to a maze of rooms, many of them packed floor to ceiling with vinyl.

Chopper had seen it all, and as I tuned up he seemed at best ambivalent, but almost immediately on playing a few songs live in the studio, he seemed to brighten, and the banter began back and forth between he and I and fellow presenter Chris, and before I realised, it had become a 40-minute slot and a new connection, with people calling the station to say they had just bought tickets for that night’s show at the Black Sheep in Wakefield, after hearing the first few songs.

Warren and Marilyn told me that Chopper and Chris continued to play my songs in the weeks after I left, and I was looking forward to hooking up with them again on my next trip to Ottawa this summer.

Sadly, Chopper passed away on Thursday after a long battle with heart disease. He was 66. Those involved in Ottawa’s folk music scene are devastated to lose him.

Chopper’s life was one of those uniquely Canadian experiences - as the child of a member of the Canadian armed forces, he was born in Manitoba, but grew up in Germany, Ireland, England and El Paso, Texas, with the family finally settling in Ottawa in 1962. After spending some time in Winnipeg and in the Maritimes, he moved to Toronto and became involved in the city’s folk scene just as the legends of Canadian folk music – Joni Mitchell, Neil Young et al – were passing through the coffee houses of Yorkville.

Chopper started the Canadian Spaces show as a volunteer, and it became a firm Saturday morning fixture for thousands of Canadians listening in the Ottawa region and all over the country online. During the CKCU FM’s annual fundraising drive, Canadian Spaces consistently brought in the most money of all the shows on the station.

In 2000, to mark the 20^th anniversary of the show, the City of Ottawa declared a Chopper McKinnon Day. He would open the programme every Saturday by urging his listeners – who he called Space Cadets – to make a pot of their ‘favourite hot brown drink’ and enjoy some uninterrupted folk music.

The show focussed on Canadian music, so I was honoured to be included as an outsider in the programme schedule, and the broadcasts that followed. For that reason, I was awarded an honorary title, one which I’m very proud to maintain. He called me... a ‘Space Invader’.

(If you’d like to know more about CKCU FM, or read the tribute to Chopper from the station president,, visit http://www.ckcufm.com/

The station also has its own Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CKCUFM )

Sunday February 24 - last walk in Toronto

Yonge Street in Toronto – dirty snow from last week’s blizzard still piled up on the sidewalks. Outside the Eaton Centre, there’s a collection of Sunday afternoon preachers and attention grabbers, including a guy handing out ‘Black History’ newspapers and someone offering free information on Islam.

Further on, a gathering of pale women handing out vegetarian literature. They stand in front of pop-up displays of the meat/murder interface - grim abbatoir interiors, puddles of blood and swinging carcases on steel hooks. Nice. Thanks. On the pavement at their feet they have a little clutch of stuffed toy animals - pink piglets huddled together.

Beside them a raggedy-looking banjo player turns his back to the traffic and does his best with cold fingers.

Just at the corner, there’s a guy – young for a street preacher – with a trendy beard and beanie hat, exhorting us to give praise and thanks.

‘How many times do we give thanks to God?’ he asks. ‘The one who made… everything?’ And since this is Yonge Street in Toronto, it’s a river of busy human beings - and no-one stops to answer.

So far, so familiar. As I wait at the light, he takes a different tack. Spotting someone in the crowd with a cup, he blares through the megaphone: ‘Hmmm… That Starbuck’s sure looks tasty. Is it good? Yeah? Did you thank Jesus? Did you THANK GOD for your STARBUCK'S today?’

The light turns green and we move off and away. Beside me a couple of young girls catch my eye and we all snigger, our breath rising in silver clouds as we part ways at the corner. After half a block, even the sound of the banjo player is gone.

Up against the curtains

We had our first taste of the Folk Alliance experience last night. The event is unusual in that all of the showcase gigs (which form about 50 per cent of the event) happen in the actual hotel rooms – so you wander along the corridor on floor 11 and there’s a folk trio with an accordion in room 1179, and next door there’s a ballad singer from Ohio with a keyboard.

Two doors along the corridor from that there’s a room devoted solely to artists from Alberta, where they hand you a Steamwhistle beer and you sit down and listen to everything from mother & daughter harmony trios to hard-time honky-tonk bards.

It’s a great leveller, actually. No matter how many albums you’ve put out, or how good your publicity is, or how great thy beard, you still have to stand up against the curtains with no amplification, in a poorly-lit hotel bedroom and play your songs to the 12 or 14 people who have squeezed in, sitting on the bed or a few assembled chairs. It’s like a rolling audition.

And of course you can NEVER tell – the guy with the cool pork pie hat and the expensive guitar produces three of the most leaden songs I’ve ever heard. I was actually in the act of forgetting them right as he was singing them. But the bewildered looking skinny girl with a mandolin has material you’d give your right arm for.

And the corridors are filled with all kinds of folk refugees – from white haired veterans with ponytails and baseball caps down to bearded Mumford-alikes in Converse sneakers and tweed.

Meanwhile, the ‘official’ gigs are happening downstairs in the hotel conference suites. The Delta Chelsea has a second floor that is nothing but conference rooms of various sizes. Over the course of the next few days, everyone from Sam Baker to Judy Collins will perform here. And we will divide our time between these gigs and the crowded corridors upstairs.

Outside Toronto gleams in the winter sunshine. It’s icy cold here, but the pavements and roads are clear and we’re right downtown, with lots of restaurant and coffee choices if you want to get away from stringed instruments for a while.

We’ve discovered a little eggs & sausage diner down the street from the hotel, and it has become an unofficial Folk Alliance breakfast hangout spot. Everybody’s handing each other fliers over their waffles and coffee.

We’re working the rooms, and constantly bumping into opportunity – this guy runs a series of house concerts, that person books a festival in Colorado. This one has an online radio station looking for new content. And we’re constantly picking up people’s contact details and finding out what they’re looking for – the hard work will be piecing together a plan from all of this when we get home.

Anthony's travel anxieties - Part 117

Drinking airport beer and eating oysters with Andrea en route to Toronto.

I’m still shuddering from the disconcerting experience of arriving in Newark airport, where as soon as you clear the glum Ellis Island-esque queue of Arrivals, you proceed to the ‘bag re-check area’.

This is an open part of the airport concourse where you hand your luggage (and in my case a very precious instrument) to a bunch of guys with no uniforms or name tags, just guys with bar code readers who step up and take the luggage from your willing hands, and who don’t say a word or make any eye contact at all.

It reminds me once again that when we’re in transit we invest an enormous amount of faith in complete strangers. In this instant, this split second, we decide to trust that the people who grab our luggage, without even grunting at us, will make sure that it actually gets on a plane with its nose pointing towards Canada.

I tip another oyster into my stale mouth and realise that I have nothing to show for this exchange. No receipt, no tag, nothing. For all I know, the enormous Fall of Saigon-scale pile of luggage could be halfway to Brooklyn in an unmarked van by now. I could be the latest victim of the Bar Code Scanner Gang. Four guys who found old bar code readers in a junkyard and had a bright idea.

Come to think of it, did I actually hear a ‘beep’ during that exchange? I don’t THINK so. Did I ACTUALLY see that familiar tremulous red line cross the barcode on my guitar? Nope.

I have a cold sweat that I’ll arrive at Toronto and some practical minded Canadian at the airport will look at me in the Baggage Reclaim area and say: ‘You did WHAT? Who WAS this person? You just GAVE your luggage to a guy with a BARCODE READER?’

And I will stand there, speechless and stupid, stupid, stupid.

(postscript – the luggage did turn up, of course. And yes, airport beer and oysters are expensive)

Highlights of a loooong year

John Cheever at work - short stories not to be missed...I had long periods at the start of 2012 where I found it difficult to get to grips with reading – I seemed to be distracted by all kinds of things, and as a result I dipped into a lot of poetry and short stories. Favourites among those were short stories by John Cheever. I read about a dozen of them in January. I also hugely enjoyed These Are My Rivers, a collection of poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti – a kind of greatest hits that contains my favourites of his: 'I Am Waiting' and 'Autobiography'.

I did find time for The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry – utterly gorgeous and very moving. My favourite living Irish author. Staying with Irish literature, I also loved George’s Ghosts, Brenda Maddox’s enjoyable biography of WB Yeats.

Latterly, I’ve enjoyed Trampled Under Foot, Barney Hoskyns’ racy romp through the history of Led Zeppelin, and Nick Kent’s The Dark Stuff, writings on rock, or more particularly, on the self-destructive side of rock’n’roll. Impossible to put down.

I also bought Chris Ware’s monumental Building Stories. It’s an amazing object: a box about the size of a bulky board game, which contains a multitude of stories in the form of pamphlets, newspapers, magazines and posters, all of them telling stories about the occupants of a single brownstone building. It’s a towering achievement, and one that kind of re-defines what we think of as a book. I’m saving it for the Christmas break. But I need to be careful – too much Chris Ware can sink you into despair.

I travelled to Andalucia with Andrea (left) and her mother Julia at Easter, so I re-read Laurie Lee’s delightful A Rose for Winter, which contains some beautiful writing on the region. I also raced through A Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. Which delighted me in the moment, but hasn’t actually stayed with me, I’m afraid to say.

During the summer I read The Moviegoer by Walker Percy and Something Happened by Joseph Heller, both of which kind of opened the door on the restlessness and unhappiness at the centre of contemporary life and relationships, and sapped my strength a bit as a result.

I came back from Canada in the summer and promptly read Richard Ford’s new novel called... Canada. I adored it – he’s still a unique and incredibly truthful writer. Others I loved this year – A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway and On Writing by Stephen King.

Musically, I’ve revisited a lot of Led Zeppelin after reading the Barney Hoskyns. Some of it (mostly Physical Graffiti, to be honest) stands the test of time, while others (Presence) don’t. I keep going back to the same clutch of classics – Custard Pie, Black Dog, When the Levee Breaks, Kashmir...

I also LOVED Gregory Porter’s beautiful jazz/soul album Be Good – a measured and ravishing performance from all concerned. And I revisited lots of mid-period Miles Davis, too – Milestones and Someday My Prince Will Come. I went through a Glenn Gould period, too – mostly listening to his Goldberg Variations, but also some Brahms.

Alabama Shakes’ album Boys & Girls was a constant on our stereo at home and in the car, as was Andrew Bird’s Break It Yourself, which contains some of his strongest works. I also loved Bob Dylan’s Tempest – uneven, but hitting lots of high points. It was also good to pick up the remastered Hats by The Blue Nile, with bonus material. My old friend Davy Rankin once described Hats as being ‘an album to be listened to while walking through a deserted city on a winter night’ and I haven’t heard a better description.

My album of the year is one I picked up only a week ago, but which came out back in February – Young Man In America by Anais Mitchell. I just cannot get enough of this atmospheric, personal-meets-mythical vision of America, seen through the eyes of relationships and rooted in the land. It elates me enormously and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Click HERE for a superb video for Coming Down, to give you a sample of this amazing artist.

What else...? Andrea and I saw a few plays this year and hardly any movies, but time was much tighter for me in terms of work and evening commitments, so I have a smaller number of treats to choose from. The one that stands out was Straight to Video – the production for the Mac’s first season by comedy dance troupe Ponydance. I laughed out loud and marvelled at this from start to finish: a hilarious collection of sketches and routines that was inventive, clever and filled with heart.

Some lovely things came into my life this year – a beautiful antique rolltop desk that dominates a corner of my room and provides me with a wonderful working surface. I’ve always wanted an old rolltop desk, and when we spotted it in an antique shop at a good price, I realised it was too good to miss and I gathered up whatever money I could and bought it. I now work on a big beautiful surface, surrounded by oak and all kinds of drawers. It’s a bit like being at the bridge of an old ship.

I also indulged my taste for old typewriters – you can pick them up here and there for very little money if you keep your eyes open. I found a late 50s Remington Rand No 5 (pictured in the graphic at the top of this page) in its original case down in Greyabbey and made it mine for £30. A few days later after a rub down and a new ribbon, it became a favourite for writing letters and working on song lyric ideas.

Another delight to come into my life this year was a Squier Telecaster, a beautiful electric guitar that didn’t cost a lot of money but which has become one of my favourite things to fondle.

And I also love this adorable picture of my grandmother on my mother’s side, taken some time in the late 40s on the mountain between Coleraine and Limavady, feeding the chickens at the side of the house on the Murder Hole Road.

There has been so much to be grateful for in 2012. There have been lots of challenges in terms of health (my own and my parents) and the juggling of work and creative commitments. But by the end of the year there should be a new collection of songs to show for it, and I step towards 2013 with high hopes and rugged footwear.

Woody Allen on the doubts that follow all creativity

From the recent Oliver Burkeman interview with Woody Allen in the Guardian - he says it wonderfully about the doubt that assails anyone involved in the creative process:

“I have an idea for a story, and I think to myself, my God, this is a combination of Eugene O’Neill, and Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller... but that’s because when you’re writing you don’t have to face the test of reality. You’re at home, in your house, it’s all in your mind. Now, when it’s almost over, and I see what I’ve got, I start to think: what have I done? This is going to be such an embarrassment! Can I salvage it? All your grandiose ideas go out the window. You realise you made a catastrophe, and you think: what if I put the last scene first, drop this character, put in narration?”

These fusillades of self-criticism, you sense, aren’t false modesty, nor real terror, but something else: the musings of a veteran who has long since come to terms with the fact that his creative process will always be a long slide into disillusionment. Nine times out of ten, he says, when he leaves the screening room of the first rough cut: “The feeling is: OK, now don’t panic.” The other 10% of the time, it’s “OK. That’s not as bad as I thought.”

A Poem for Monday - River by Carol Ann Duffy

This was the poem that Andrea and I selected to be read at our wedding, by the Gatineau River on August 3rd 2011. It seemed to sum up everything we had to say about each other, the location and the time in our lives. And it remains true, relevant and spellbinding every time I read it - like it had been written for us.

River by Carol Ann Duffy

Down by the river, under the trees, love waits for me

to walk from the journeying years of my time and arrive.

I part the leaves and they toss me a blessing of rain.

The river stirs and turns consoling and fondling itself

with watery hands, its clear limbs parting and closing.

Grey as a secret, the heron bows its head on the bank.

I drop my past on the grass and open my arms, which ache

as though they held up this heavy sky, or had pressed

against window glass all night as my eyes sieved the stars;

open my mouth, wordless at last meeting love at last, dry

from travelling so long, shy of a prayer. You step from the shade,

and I feel love come to my arms and cover my mouth, feel

my soul swoop and ease itself into my skin, like a bird

threading a river. Then I can look love full in the face, see

who you are I have come this far to find, the love of my life.

Making new friends at the checkout

Queuing is the great leveller – it brings you face to face with the world. Yesterday I found myself in line for the self-service checkouts at Tesco on Royal Avenue, Belfast. A sullen-faced woman was attempting to scan her Mail on Sunday, but without success, so she was performing a kind of low-velocity swordfight with the scanner.

In front of me was a guy in his mid-20s with cropped hair, a dirty hoodie and a pair of jeans, soaked from the knee to the cuffs. He was carrying a two-litre bottle of cider. At one point he turned to look at me and revealed an angry-looking cut across the bridge of his nose, a fat lip and a huge black eye.

He gave me one of the most hate-filled, savage looks I’ve ever received - and turned back to wait his turn for the next scanner.

And I stood there, with my little handful… ginger, some medium-hot chillies and a bunch of coriander. For a Guardian recipe I wanted to try by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

I can’t remember the last time I felt so middle class.

On the eve of the East Belfast Arts Festival - a personal Van the Man top ten...

Well, ladies and gents – only four more sleeps until I become part of the Van Morrison, East Belfast Arts Festival extravaganza – Aircraft Park, Belfast, this Saturday, September 8 for those of you who haven't heard.

I’m performing that afternoon as part of a line-up that includes Mama Kaz, Gareth Dunlop, Brian Houston, Belfast Community Gospel Choir, the Wonder Villains, Katie and the Carnival and Shana Morrison – with the whole thing topped off by a performance for the first time back in his home territory of East Belfast’s most famous son, Van the Man.
 
Click HERE to be directed to the ticketmaster page if you’d like to buy tickets. I understand some tickets may be available on the door on the day (maybe it’s ‘on the flap’ if you’re playing in a marquee, I don’t know)
 
As part of the run-up, I thought it might be nice to throw together a little personal Top Ten of Van tracks – drop me a line and let me know your selection, or some that you think I might have missed. It’s such a great back catalogue, where would you start/stop?
 
1 - Fair Play (from Veedon Fleece)
 
The first time I heard this was years ago, it was on a dusty old vinyl copy of Veedon Fleece - and it seems steeped in the ages now, the sound of upright pianos in sunlit rooms. Oscar Wilde and Thoreau… Someone gave me a CD copy of Veedon Fleece in Canada during the summer and I rode through the woods in a borrowed car for days, playing this over and over as the sun came down through the leaves and played on the windscreen. I missed the sound of the dust and the passing years, but the piano was still as heartbreaking as it had always been.
 
2 - She Gives Me Religion (from Beautiful Vision)
 
The most beautiful track on the gorgeous Beautiful Vision album: the sleepy Sunday afternoon sound of bells, pretty girls in their summer fashion and the angel of imagination lighting a fire in a young heart. Elegiac trumpet from Mark Isham and a superb arrangement. I just keep coming back to it, and it never fails to deliver.
 
3 – Madame George (from Astral Weeks)
 
There’s little to be said about this masterpiece that hasn’t already been said – perfectly poetic, perfectly street-level, beautifully observed, delivered with tenderness and attitude and filled with loving details – ‘throwing pennies at the bridges down below’. It remains as fresh as ever to this day.

4 - A Sense of Wonder (from A Sense of Wonder)
 
Van explores his Belfast childhood on this evocative title track from the 1986 album. ‘Gravy rings, wagon wheels, barnbracks, snowballs...’ An irresistible exploration of the emotional geography of a hometown and the fields that surrounded it and were such a source of inspiration for the young artist. Van has touched on the subject many times, but never quite as beautifully. And I am an enormous advocate of… wonder.
 
5 - Queen of the Slipstream (from Poetic Champions Compose)
 
Quite simply one of the most beautiful performances from the superb Poetic Champions Compose collection. As a piece of songwriting, it sounds completely contemporary and two hundred years old at exactly the same time.
 
6 - Rave On John Donne (from Live at the Grand Opera House, Belfast)
 
‘Tonight you will understand the one-ness’… Live at the Grand Opera House Belfast is one of my favourite live albums of all time – with Van backed by an absolutely wonderful band, all of them on top form. They rise to the occasion on this fabulous rendition. When Van moves from the spoken to the sung section he rises to it, line by line. It’s hair-raising. And when the band crank up into the final, faster section they turn into a groove that takes that ruminative beauty and welds it to a punchy, muscular performance.
 
7 - Come Running (from Moondance)
 
There are few songwriters who capture the joy of summertime and young love like Van – Brown Eyed Girl nailed it wonderfully. The fact that you’ve heard it a million times doesn’t mean it isn’t one of the greatest ever songs about being young and smitten. ‘Making love in the green grass behind the stadium with you, my brown eyed girl’. It doesn’t get much better than that. Come Running explores similar emotional geography, jazzier and funkier – and his voice is just great against a hook-laden horn arrangement. I particularly love it when the horns and voice play against each other in the chorus: ‘I said HEY!’ – bam! – ‘Come running to me’.
 
8 - Hungry for Your Love (from Wavelength)
 
From Wavelength – the deeply groovy arrangement of this Wavelength cut conceals a killer punch, the syncopated roar of one of Van’s most memorable choruses. It’s like the whole band holds its breath and the heart skips a beat as he jumps in: ‘I’ve got such a lot of love…’ a perfect marriage of words, music, rhythm and attitude.
 
9 - Into the Mystic (from Moondance)
 
The Moondance album is packed with gems, and they don’t come much better than this, a Van classic that feels like it’s steeped in the waters of Belfast Lough, with reference to foghorns and an exhortation to ‘smell the sea and feel the sky’. It’s a blueprint for all kinds of music that came after, and it remains one of the best EVER examples of pure Celtic Soul.
 
10 - Tura Lura (from The Last Waltz)
 
If you’ve seen The Last Waltz, you’ll surely agree that Van walks away with the Man of the Match award for his roof-raising, high-kicking performance of Caravan. But the full performance, captured in the Last Waltz four-disc box set, contains the other Van performance from the show – a rather strange choice of Tura Lura (An Irish Lullaby) that contains a startling vocal performance from Richard Manuel and Van, who converts the song to a full-throated soul roar that put the hairs up on the back of the neck and leaves them standing. Complete with backing from The Band and the Last Waltz horn section, it’s an unmissable gem.
 
Drop me a line with your choices - at anthonytonermusic @ gmail.com
 
And in the meantime, for those of you who enjoy hearing me play the blues with the Ronnie Greer Band, we’re in action this weekend down in Monaghan at the Harvesttime Blues Festival. We play The Anchor Bar on Friday night at 9.30pm, and then on Sunday we have two shows – Terry’s Bar on Sunday afternoon at 4pm, and later that night the Westenra Hotel at 9pm.
  
CURRENTLY READING: Hugely enjoying Up In the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell (right) - a collection of journalism from the New Yorker writer. A wonderful ragbag of unforgettable eccentrics and New York characters, including street preachers, bearded ladies, publicans, deadbeats and entertainers. A real treasure chest of observation - I was struck that the young Bob Dylan might have filled his first five albums with the characters displayed here.
 
CURRENTLY LISTENING: Prefab Sprout - the greatest hits collection A Life Full of Surprises. I have a taste for the Prefabs every now and then, but it's like chocolate. After forty minutes of it my teeth start to rot. Sweet, slick and smart, Paddy McAloon wrote some beautiful tunes, and then cloaked them all in sugary synth washes, chimy guitars and breathy harmonies. But it's great to pump yourself full of that stuff every now and then, when all the other rock bands sound a bit... meat & potatoes.

Book Review: Sightlines by Kathleen Jamie

Kathleen Jamie’s extraordinary book of essays is full of journeys and discoveries, most of them taking place in high, fierce latitudes, buffeted by the wind, frozen and dazzled by bright northern days. And the book is a collection of marvels, like a scrapbook compiled by someone with a keen eye and an enormous heart.

It shrieks and blows with the noises of wild things and isolation – there are accounts of her visit to gannet sanctuaries and abandoned island villages, descriptions of whales, petrels and guillemots on the very edge of the inhabited world.

Jamie has already won prizes for her poetry, and that’s no surprise: ‘...To be named for the sky or the rainbow, and live in constant sight and sound of the sea. After a mere fortnight, I feel lighter inside, as though my bones were turning to flutes’.

And here’s a description of a flock of crossbills taking flight on the Isle of Rona: ‘There were about a hundred – the males were bright red and the females brown, so when they all flew by, they were like ambers blown from a bonfire.’

There were times when I got a little slowed up by the archaeology and naturalist lore, but then some delicious fact would stop me in my tracks: ‘It was said that when Hirta was inhabited, a thorough-going gale would leave the people deaf for days’.

Central to the collection is the recurring presence of whales – and more especially whale bones. She is at her most elegiac and inspiring in some of these passages, describing the whale bones set up as monuments around the country: ‘Whales apparently hear through their jawbones; they have no external ears as we do – so the very jawbones now raised around the country at large would, in life, have picked up sound waves in the ocean. What did they hear, these jaws, these eardrums? They heard us coming, that’s what.’

‘Sightlines’ is published by Sort Of Books – CLICK HERE to be directed to the relevant Amazon page.

Me & My Typewriters - a meditation

AT THE AGE of nine or ten, as the shop windows began to twinkle with the approach of Christmas, I sent a ray of hope out into the world. A wish that Christmas would deliver me… a typewriter.

I have no idea where the idea came from – I may have seen someone in a movie, pounding away on an old Olympia, and considered it the coolest thing in the world (I still do, I suppose – my love affair with the Typewriter As Object has lasted to this day).

Santa Claus must have looked at my letter with some puzzlement – because even in 1974, the typewriter was something undoubtedly asked for by a girl.

Maybe I saw one in my mother’s Great Universal catalogue and just fell for the rows of buttons, keys, levers, rollers, the boys-and-their-toys clatter and batter of the thing. The sound of words being physically hammered into the page. Undeletably permanent. A lasting, industrial meeting of steel and ink and paper.

My first typewriter was an object that, to be honest, stopped me somewhat short of the manly, Hemingway-esque ideal of the author at the keys. On Christmas morning, there it sat under the tree – a bright orange, plastic, boxy thing that I believe (looking back) was a copy of the ‘design classic’ Olivetti Valentine.

It came in its own soft carry-case – in imitation faded denim, its snap-button cover accentuated with white piping. There was even an adjustable shoulder strap, to complete the air-hostess-ness of the whole thing.

I can’t begin to image what I put through the machine over the years that followed. Reams of meaningless sentences, no doubt – but no real narratives to speak of. At ten years old, what could I possibly have typed on this object, other than the usual ten-year-old nonsense: ‘Here Iam,,  workjking on myt ypewriter’))))

It vanished from my life at some point, maybe gifted to a younger cousin, I don’t know. And at various points, typewriters came and went from my life – my late father-in-law Hugh McShane told me that he had procured one for me, when I was working on my first short stories. He came home from work one day with something that had been made redundant by technology and which was otherwise bound for the scrapyard - an enormous, beautiful black Imperial that weighed a ton and made a racket like a hammer drill.

Later, my then wife Donna had a cute little grey Boots portable typewriter that I used for short fiction, job applications and apologetic letters to the bank from time to time.

By the time I started in journalism in the mid-80s, typewriters were already completely obsolete. From the day I started, we worked on Amstrads – clunky, grubby Bakelite, green letters dancing across the black screen. And later of course, the omnipresent Mac and more recently, the PCs and laptops.

I did rekindle my affair with the typewriter about fifteen years ago. I found an old Smith Premier Chum (left) gathering dust in an antique shop in Coleraine and for £23 brought it home with me.

I have typed many things on it – letters, newspaper journalism (sitting out in the sunshine, typing court reports and council news with a beer), short stories, song lyrics, even some of these blog posts.

There’s something about the physical act of typing, the permanence of the utterance, that makes you pause slightly and consider each word before making the irreversible commitment of keystroke to page. It focuses the thought process. The Smith Premier also has a wooden roller - and the sound of the keys striking the wood is a particular thwack that is indeed vintage.

Recently I made another investment – a Remington Rand No. 5, dating back, I think, to the 50s. I came across this one (pictured above, and on the ‘Blether’ graphic at the head of this web page) in an antique shop in Greyabbey.

I wrestled a little before the purchase, strolling from room to room, past twinkling china and scuffed suitcases, asking myself if I really needed another vintage typewriter. No – I didn’t need it, of course. But I was going to buy it anyway.

I love it – like I’ve always loved typewriters. With the kind of unconditional love that turns the unwary enthusiast into a collector if he’s not careful.

Let's hear it for... The Third Man

For the first time in many years, I watched The Third Man last night – and was once again dazzled by it. It’s a surprisingly confident film, with its odd camera angles, and Harry Lime as the Godot-like absence at the heart of the film, and wonderful use of light and shadow in the backstreets of post-war Vienna.

The theme tune is also unforgettable, and some of the set-pieces remain breathtaking... the wall shadows, the chase through the sewers and the fingers reaching up through the grille.

There’s no point in running through the plotline here, but on this viewing, a few things struck me. The rudderless Maria character was always weak and simpering, but this time round she struck me as having been infected by Harry Lime, in the same way those who had consumed his watered-down penicillin had been. She seemed contaminated, weak-willed.

The central character Holly Martins is the absence of a hero - a writer who despises his own work, blunders from scene to scene, uncovers nothing, discovers nothing. He digs and digs for the truth, only to come upon it by accident as lights are switched on and people blurt things and give themselves away.

The fact that underneath all of the divisions of the quartered city, a criminal enterprise is thriving down below in the darkness, along the sewers, is a strong metaphor: the triumph of secret crime, right under the noses of those policing the public and political disagreements above.

And Orson Welles is a byword for charisma – he brings the film to life the minute he emerges from the shadows. It’s a brave story-telling choice, to make such a morally loathsome character so magnetic. That’s the power of Graham Greene (who wrote the screenplay) as a writer, I suppose.

And it’s always a treat to hear Lime’s famous little speech at the fairground on how dull democracy and 'brotherly love' are. To say something so amoral with such flair.

If you’ve never seen it, I recommend it highly - here's Harry's wonderful speech at the fairground:

Stones in my passway...

An ultrasound scan of somebody ELSE's healthy gallbladder. Looking very smug.So... I’ve been diagnosed with gallbladder ‘problems’ – a traffic sign that, in my mind, points squarely into the part of town known as Middle Age.

Actually, not necessarily so – they tell me you can have gall-worries at almost any age... At any rate, the beginning of such an ailment would appear to lead inevitably towards some kind of surgery.

Oh joy.

The Pain – when it comes – is truly a thing of majesty, of which more later. It’s big enough to bring a sidekick with it, a second, more insidious pain: the agony of looking at menus and knowing The Consequences, which come as side orders to each choice. It occasionally turns me into one of these pains in the arse who winces through menus and tells dining companions what he really shouldn't have...

So... steak & fries, mayonnaise, blue cheeses and ice cream sundaes are starting to slip out of my life, like sexy old girlfriends who come round to your house occasionally, but always leave you doubled over in pain in the middle of the night, bathed in cold sweat and hot regret.

I visited my doctor, who was done with me in less than ten minutes, referring me for an ultra-sound examination at the Ulster Hospital. ‘When the pain hits,’ I asked, ‘is there anything I can take to ease it?’

‘No,’ he said, helpfully. ‘Just take really strong pain medication and wait for it to pass.’

He prescribes Co-Dydramol, which I’m told is the Sherman Tank of pain relief. A week later, as if to test its armour, The Pain comes to visit. Earlier that evening, I had been dragged (against my will) into a Mexican food outlet in south Belfast. I (reluctantly) purchased a burrito, then retired to a sunlit bench in the Botanic Gardens and (under duress) ate the whole thing in less than twelve minutes.

Yum.

I was awoken at two in the morning by a large discomfort across the base of my ribcage, and immediately got up and swallowed two of the painkillers with a glass of water. Getting up and moving around seemed to make it start in earnest. It’s an almost impossible pain to describe. It doesn’t burn, it doesn’t gnaw or bite. It simply IS, enormously. It’s a cinemascope, widescreen pain, non-specific to any particular part of the midriff, but just deep and relentless. No amount of rubbing or writhing, standing up or sitting down, rolling over, applied pressure, hot water bottles, lying this way or that, will make it stop. It’s a four-foot-wide pain that feels like it has forced its way inside your sixteen-inch-wide torso like a fencepost you swallowed without remembering. You lie in bed reading short stories at three in the morning waiting for the tablets to start working.

At the Ulster Hospital, a trained operator slathers my belly with conductor fluid (and yes, in case you're wondering it IS just as unsexy as it sounds) and begins to roll a sensor across my embarrassed bulges. I keep expecting to hear a beep, like it has discovered a bar code on my liver. Unrecognised item in bagging area.

I’m not sure how to behave – she’s pretty businesslike and says nothing more than ‘breathe in’ and ‘relax’ every now and then. She pauses here and there for long and worrying spells where nothing moves but my tremulous little palpitating heart – what is she LOOKING AT for so long? God... for all I know my internal cavities could be a bristling cave of carcinogenic stalagmites.

And what am I supposed to do? Am I allowed to look at the screen? I steal a glance- it’s as you’d expect, a shadowy grey world of white blobs and dark crevices. Things loom out of the shadows and disappear again, like featureless marine mammals.

I try to break the ice. ‘Well,’ I say after a while. ‘I hope it’s not twins.’

She smiles. She’s heard this a million times, I reckon. And has a stock reply: ‘You could make a lot of money if it was.’

She tells me nothing that I didn’t already suspect: ‘Your gallbladder is giving you some problems.’

But I’m surprisingly wobbly-kneed with gratitude when she tells me that there’s ‘nothing else sinister’ that she can see. The sun shining on the dual carriageway at Dundonald never looked so lovely as it did after hearing that. (The world, of course, has a way of handing perspective to you, just when you need it most)

The next stage is to hear from the doctor about an appointment for surgery. They tell me – the people who Know About These Things, and have Been Through It – that it will be 'keyhole' surgery, which I suppose is something else to be grateful for. Better than the alternative means of surgery, I imagine – ‘Cat Flap Surgery’ for example, or ‘Trap Door’. ‘Velux Window Surgery’.

There are other methods of treatment – a friend of Andrea’s (Andrea has started to refer to me as ‘Asterix The Gallstones’, by the way) has suggested a ‘gallbladder flush’ recipe. Listen to this: This involves fasting for three days, drinking nothing but raw fresh apple juice. Then at 3pm on the third day, drink a quarter of a litre of cold pressed olive oil. Then drink a quarter of a litre of STRAIGHT LEMON JUICE. This apparently flushes the stones and gravel right out of the system. Along with, I imagine, your will to live.

If there are any future developments, I will of course get my people to call your people. In the meantime, I’m preparing to join the massed ranks of brothers and sisters on one of those quaint old things called an NHS waiting list.

Waiting for buses

This morning, an old couple in the bus station. He’s wearing pinstripe trousers & black shoes, shirt & tie & one of those rainproof coats like football managers wear. Steely grey hair brushed straight back. She’s wearing a shapeless purple anorak over a cream cardigan, black trousers, black shoes. She has dyed her hair black, & the roots are showing white. Her hair looks like she has slept clumsily on it, a big white flat patch with the edges sticking up like a forest clearing. She has a crutch on one arm & a canvas shopping bag that says BAG to the FUTURE. They must be going grocery shopping. He will walk the aisles in his shirt & tie. Until then they wait for the bus, they sit & stare along parallel lines into separate spaces, or gaze at their shoes & they say

not

one

word

to each other for twenty long minutes as the buses come & go & the guy on the opposite bench jingles his change

over &

over &

over again.